QuiQui's Giant Bounce - a physically interactive computer game and story for children

QuiQui's Giant Bounce is an award winning computer game for 4 to 9 year old children that is controlled through movement and voice. The game does away with keyboards and traditional game controllers and uses a web camera and a microphone to "see and hear" the player.

In order to play, you only need (in addition to a computer) a microphone and a web camera costing no more than 50 €, the going price for a computer game. The demo of the game can be downloaded on these pages.

The game is comprised of an intriguing, fast-moving story and the physical excercises that makes up the gameplay. The player controls the main character, QuiQui, by moving in the way described in the story. For example, upon arrival to the desert, the player needs to fly the character in the sky by waving his or her hands and flexing the body. A little scream makes QuiQui let out a fiery breath.

According to our knowledge, QuiQui's Giant Bounce is the world's first computer game that combines a quality storyline with physical interaction and research on children's motor development. The game has been designed in co-operation with schools, day-care centers and the Young Finland Association. Children have been actively involved with the game-design process through their participation in usability test, brainstorming sessions and interviews. The project will also provide material for the makers' doctoral dissertation papers.

More material on the game can be found in the Bouncics Today section.

Goals

The goal of the game is to offer a physically challenging alternative to more conventional computer games. QuiQui activates children into using their bodies and thus develops their physical abilities, such as coordination skills, spatial recognition and balance.

Children's computer games based on physical interaction are few and far in between, and the existing ones need special sensor equipment to work.

Our goal is to make QuiQui's Giant Bounce to stand out from other products and tests based on physical interaction in the following ways:

• Richness of the storyline. QuiQui's Giant Bounce is an adventure story that takes the player to places with different visual, auditory and physical themes, for example, flying in the sky, swimming in the water, floating in zero gravity at the center of the game world.
  
  
• A user interface making use of the whole body as opposed to a sensor carpet or the like. The technology behind the game does not interfere with the gameplay, as the user interface does not require any gadgets the player should wear or use.
  
  
• The optimization of computer vision for cheap web cameras. Computer vision has previously been used mainly in expensive installations that call for extensive re-configuration when installed in a new playing environment. Our game works automatically with many different brands of cameras, even the most affordable ones. The game can be played in every home, without expensive purchases or technical skills.
  
  
• Goals relating to physical education are no less important alongside the artistic and technical aspects of the game. The game creators' own expertise is augmented by the co-operation with the Young Finland Association and the students of the Department of Sport Science of the Jyväskylä University.
  
  
• New research in physical interaction. As there is little research data and few products based on physical interaction and research data, the development of the game calls for new, ground-breaking research in in the fields of computer vision technology, children's usability testing, pedagogy, children's developmental psychology and physical development, among others.
  

Current situation

We have completed the game platform, the computer vision technology required to track the player, the synopsis for the story and the demo of the first level of the game, the flying game. It can be downloaded on these pages (www.kukakumma.net).

The flying game has been user tested with 15 children aged 3 to 8. Based on the results we've gotten we are convinced that the game works and that the project can be completed with no unsolvable problems in sight.

The game has received a lot of publicity in the main news of the Finnish Nelonen television network, the TilT! gaming show on the MTV3 network, the Metro and Aamulehti newspapers, to name a few. The first level of the game was reviewed at the Mainio.net www site. The concept also won the Pikku Kakkonen Award at the 2001 Tampere MindTrek competition.